Outstanding Works by Art Students Honored

Once again, students of TU Dortmund University are presenting their impressive artistic works at the City Campus in the Dortmunder U at the close of the summer semester’s lecture period. The annual exhibition “Rundgang Kunst” is on view until 23 August and offers the students the opportunity to present their art to a wider audience. At the opening on 23 July, the best works were honored with awards.

The works on display, which were created in the studios of the Academy of Fine Arts, engage ~~in manifold ways~~ with the perception of reality in manifold ways; they open up new connections and call conventions, clichés, and certainties into question. A jury of experts selected the most compelling artistic works in the categories of photography, graphic art, painting, and sculpture. At the grand opening, Professor. Wiebke Möhring, Vice President Academic Affairs, presented the Aart Pprizes, each endowed with 500 euros, as well as the Edition Prize.

The Prizewinners

The Art Prize in the category of painting went to Maruah Hallal for “No Address.” The series of small-format paintings deals with people experiencing homelessness in the urban landscape and translates compassion, attention, and empathy into painting, whereby what is depicted comes to be perceived anew. In this way, the life situations presented acquire a weight that is ordinarily denied them. In the painterly search for form, observation takes on shape.

In the category of graphic art, Lisa Rother received the award. Her work is radically subjective, for she examines her self through biographically significant objects, her own body, or her surroundings. She describes what she focuses on with the utmost precision and cuts away the inessential. Her configurations of shifted-scale, most finely adopted figurations reveal vulnerability, instability, isolation, or damage. With this fragmentation, she responds to the disintegration of societal systems.

In the category of sculpture, the Art Prize went to Maren Schaffrinna, whose works engage with the fragility of human existence. Here, the material plays a central role, becoming a bearer of moods, memories, and inner states. Her sculptural works appear like mirrors of inner experiences and evoke images of transience, vulnerability, and memory without pinning them down unambiguously, according to the jury.

The jury awarded the art prize for photography to Anna Ohla for her work “Filmriss” (“Tear in the Film”, meaning a mental blackout), which engages with lost or even faulty memories. When developing the negatives of her photographs taken on analog film, errors occasionally occur in the chemical process. For her collages, Anna Ohla supplements these with deliberate manipulation in the photo lab as well as handmade paper. In this way, she succeeds in reflecting on photography as a supposedly precise, technical medium and in establishing an analogy to human memory gaps.

The Edition Prize of the Rectorate was awarded to Nina Burrichter. In her series of works “FAST FELS” (“ALMOST ROCK”), she develops, with an open-ended approach, an individual scrape painting technique using tools she built herself, which she tests in a process-like manner and deploys with increasing purpose. The mountains and rocks from her series are both motif and painterly gesture, as they carry the character of objects and are at the same time an expression of the performative act of painting.

Impressions from the exhibition opening:

The exhibition opening on 23 July...
… drew numerous visitors.
Professor Barbara Welzel, academic director of the City Campus, welcomed the visitors to the Dortmunder U.
Professor Wiebke Möhring, Vice President Academic Affairs, honored the prizewinners.
Maruah Hallal received the Art Prize in the category of painting.
Anna Ohla was honored with the Art Prize in the category of photography.
The Art Prize in the category of graphic art went to Lisa Rother.
Maren Schaffrinna was honored with the Art Prize in the category of sculpture.
Nina Burrichter was delighted to receive the Edition Prize of the Rectorate.
The prizewinners together with the lecturers of the art disciplines and those representing the City Campus.
For the first time, a performance took place on the forecourt in front of the Dortmunder U following the award ceremony.

The exhibition “Rundgang Kunst” can be visited during the opening hours of the Dortmunder U. Admission is free.

Accompanying Program

Saturday, 1 August, 4.00 p.m.
Artist Talk: Artist Luna Schönberg in conversation with drag queen Divina de Campo from Manchester (interested members of the public and media representatives can register by 30 July by e-mail to sekretariat-kunst.fk16@tu-dortmund.de)

Sunday, 2 August, 12.00 noon – 5.00 p.m.
Family Sunday at the Dortmunder U

Sunday, 16 August, 12.00 noon – 3.30 p.m.
15-minute portraits with artist Dulana Tillmann

City Campus

At the City Campus, as a partner in the Dortmunder U, TU Dortmund University regularly provides insights into research and teaching. Through a variety of event formats, exhibition presentations and the space as a forum for dialogue offer the city's public the opportunity to become acquainted with the research questions and findings of the academic disciplines and to discuss them together.

Contact person for inquiries:

Back